Tuesday, June 19, 2012

R.A. Dickey is the best pitcher in baseball

As of right now R.A. Dickey leads in every pitching Triple Crown category, the tables below shows his numbers in comparison to his closest competition in the NL.


Wins
K
ERA
Dickey
11
103
2
Cain
9
100
2.34
Strasburg
8
100
2.45
Gonzalez
8
97
2.52
Greinke
7
95
3.1
Hamels
9
92
3.34

Last week he was tied for first in one category and third and fourth respectively in the other two, it took him one start to shoot to the lead in everything.  Dickey's 103 strike outs tops every season he pitched before the Mets and it's only June. If he keeps up the pace he will surpass his last two years K totals as well by the break. He is the odds on favor to be the starting pitcher for the NL in the all star game.

At the beginning of this year I wrote the Dickey Report highlighting where on every MLB club R.A. would pitch, I think at this point the answer would be he would be 1st in every rotation. He is a strikeout machine, throws very few balls, has a pitch no can get used to and is essentially immune to fatigue to and injury.

What more can I say about Dickey. It is getting to the point where I now except him to throw multiple no hitters this year. They say that it takes a lot of luck to throw a no no, now it takes a lot of luck to get a hit off Dickey. Watching R.A. pitch is something more than just watching a baseball game, it's art.

5 comments:

  1. He is the greatest pitcher in the history of MLB

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    Replies
    1. "Greatness" is hard to define and quantify, and i wouldn't call him the greatest. But this is definately one of the more dominant runs a SP has had in this era of baseball.
      It'll be interesting to see how he pitches once we finish interleague play. His dominance is partly due to the AL teams having no familiarity with him. However, i think Dickey has evolved so much in the last few weeks that he is definately a much different pitcher than he was even at the beginning of the season. It will be interesting to see if he can continue to dominate teams that have seen his "old" knuckleball in the past.

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    2. I think one of the things about the knuckleball is that you just can't get used to it. Even the pitcher throwing it doesn't know how it will break so how can a batter. I think some of the NL east teams that have seen him a lot might be a little better but I don't think anyone can learn how to hit it reliably when you only face a knuckler a few times a year.

      Also the Rays and O's should have had some familiarity with knuckleball hitting as both teams were facing Tim Wakefield for the past few years.

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    3. "Even the pitcher throwing it doesn't know how it will break so how can a batter"
      I think Dickey knows for the most part how the ball the ball will break based the stuff i hear him say in the interview.

      Dickey can't be compared to wakefield at this point. Wakefield, along with most other knuckleball pitchers, mostly had a 60-low 70s knuckleball with shoddy command, and would have some that wouldn't knuckle. I really don't remember the last time that RA threw a hanging knuckler (maybe that game way back during the Astros?). As they say with maturing pitchers, RA isn't just throwing the knuckleball, he's pitching with the knuckleball.

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    4. My understanding is that he knows the location of the pitch but not the break, I think that's the nature of the knuckleball and it's erratic flight pattern, part of the reason it's so hard to hit is that in breaks in totally random ways.

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